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what shy of strangers; in general they speak Spanish, but may be
heard occasionally to talk Indian dialect with one another; with
regard to this dialect they are, however, extremely unwilling to
afford any explanations, generally answering «es muy antiguo» «no
se nada». The Indians of Belen and the surrounding region remind
one of the Ometepec Indians, but are evidently intermixed with
foreign elements.
According to Oviedo, Torquemada, and Cerezeda, the last
one of whom accompanied Gil Gonzales de Avila in his expedition
1522, and thus is able to speak, like Oviedo, from his own personal
observations, the Niquirans had reached a higher degree of
civilization than their neighbours. However, the Chorotegans were
also pretty far advanced in culture.
Indeed, reading the scanty descriptions of the last days of
these nations, one feels tempted to assert that in harmonic
development of the mental faculties they were superior to that nation,
which, by its crowds of rapacious and sanguinary adventurers,
honoured in history with the name of «los Conquistadores», has fixed
upon itself the heavy responsibility for the annihilation of this
civilization. For indeed so swift and radical was this annihilation,
through the fanatical vandalism of «Christian» priests and the bloody
crimes of a greedy soldatesca, that history knows of no similar
example. Thus the investigator of the comparatively modern culture
of Central America is obliged to travel by more toilsome and
doubtful roads than the student of the ancient forms of civilization
of Egypt and India, although these were dead several thousands
of years ago.
So much, however, has come to the knowledge of our time,
as suffices to prove that the nations of Central America were very
far advanced in political and social development as well as in
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